Kuanguan Huang, Jie Wang, Junhao Huang, Shouke Zhang, Alfried P Vogler, Quanquan Liu, Yongchun Li, Maowei Yang, You Li, Xuguo Zhou
The gut microbiome plays an important role in a host's development and adaption to its dietary niche. In this study, a group of bamboo-feeding insects are used to explore the potential role of the gut microbiota in the convergent adaptation to extreme diet specialization. Specifically, using a 16S rRNA marker and an Illumina sequencing platform, we profiled the microbial communities of 76 gut samples collected from nine bamboo-feeding insects, including both hemimetabolous (Orthoptera and Hemiptera) and holometabolous (Coleoptera and Lepidoptera) species, which are specialized in three distinct dietary niches: bamboo leaf, shoot, and sap...
2021: Frontiers in Microbiology